Greene finds a new way to blame the media.

While seeking to deprive her of her appointments to the committee, Democrats in the House of Representatives tried to make it clear that Marjorie Taylor Greene was not being attacked for any single speech, act or comment, but rather for a long standard of defense and endorsement. dangerous conspiracy theories, for their anti-Semitic and Islamophobic comments, and for numerous acts of condemnation or incitement to violence against public figures. And yet, as she has been doing since her social media posts, videos and speeches began to haunt her, Greene once again introduced herself as an American martyr for freedom of expression. Presenting herself on Thursday as “crucified … in the public square because of the words I said”, she did not even mention the damage that could be caused by her words. Aware of her persecution at the hands of the media, she failed to understand that she herself used the media to harass other people. Her real objection, she revealed, is to the press, because apparently it was the press that made her say those words before reporting on her sincerely.

All of these things were extracted directly from the Trump manual. And much like Trump’s various “censorship” protests, it is an issue not with censorship, but with the truth. Even when Greene resigned in his comments on Thursday some of his most shocking claims – that mass shootings are staged and 9/11 did not happen – she described herself as a victim of misinformation, not her supplier and amplifier. And her choice of words with respect to the handful of claims she rescinded was purposeful: the media was infallibly to blame. Greene explained for the first time that in 2017 she was “upset about things” – the collusion investigation in Russia, for example – and more and more believed the media (she checked the name of CNN and Fox News) was lying. So, she “started researching things on the internet, asking questions like most people do every day, we[ing] Google. “It was this initial flaw on the part of the media and the lies she discovered on Google that allowed her to” trip over something … called QAnon. ” Brown encyclopedia saying, she was just an innocent truth detective, following where the internet took her. It was her search in good faith for the facts that led her astray. It was all that untrustworthy material external to her – and not herself – that ultimately meant “I could believe things that were not true”.

That was her word: allowed. She did not come to believe only in these conspiracies. The internet “allowed”, rewarded and dragged it to her. And it was the same internet that labeled it for no reason afterwards. Because Greene made it clear that it was the Facebook posts that led to her conviction. As she said, “if it weren’t for the Facebook post and the comments I liked in 2018, I wouldn’t be here today”. It’s because of Facebook that she got caught. Not your own actions. Facebook, Google, CNN, Fox News and the Congress that does nothing in 2018 did it the wrong way with her. There is no acceptance of responsibility here; there is simply the skilful reallocation of this, and in doing so, it ignites the flames of the deeply damaging claim that the press itself is the reason for distrust in the press.

Greene’s culmination of the apology without apology was the good old nihilist that “any source of information that is a mixture of truth and a mixture of lies is dangerous, no matter what you are saying, which part is helping , anything or any country is about. It’s dangerous. “And in case you lose, your final conclusion remained that the real wrongdoer here is the press:” Are we going to allow the media that is as guilty as QAnon to present truth and lies to divide us? “

It is fanning the flames of the deeply damaging claim that the press is the reason for distrust in the Press.

By limiting her pitiful “past words” to a handful of Facebook statements about 9/11 and the fake flag shootings that she claims to have stopped in late 2018, Greene was also careful to separate the many, many things who said on other forums, on other issues, recently in December 2020. She did not mention her real calls for violence and illegality in the list of things she laments. No mention of her 2019 video stating that no Muslims should be allowed to serve in the government, her 2018 claim that “the Rothschilds” started forest fires in California, or her September 2020 Facebook post featuring herself with a AR-15 and democratic representatives. Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib with the caption “The squad’s worst nightmare”. No regrets were expressed for supporting the executions of prominent Democrats in 2018-19. With no remorse or responsibility for their 2018 response to a commentator asking if they could hang Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama who said, “We must be patient. This must be done perfectly or the liberal judges would dismiss them. “No remorse or responsibility for sharing, in 2018, a notorious white nationalist video in which a Holocaust denier claimed that” Zionist supremacists planned to promote immigration and miscegenation. “

And here we are. The old apology for offensive words used to be “I’m sorry you took offense”, but in Greene’s skillful hands, this turned into some version of I am sorry that, as the press is not to be trusted, Fox News is so unbelievable, Google is so Qanistic, and Facebook is so hard to delete, I said racist, fanatical, incendiary and violent things, like many of you (and now i’m angry about getting caught for this). She does not seem to regret most of the offensive speech, but mainly she regrets that her initial totally reasonable distrust of the press led her there.. Greene also used his comments to criticize “Media Matters, CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the mainstream media” for the ways they portray her. At her press conference on Friday, she addressed the media directly, because it is the media, as she said, that is “addicting the country to hate”. This was part of their far-reaching and hateful attack on Nancy Pelosi, AOC, Black Lives Matter, Socialists and Democrats. Journalists, in this narrative, lie when they lie, and journalists also lie when they tell the truth. This is all just a win-win transfer of guilt for those who seek to discredit honest journalism.

This whole episode reinforced the same circular criticism on which the right-wing media relied for decades: It is not our fault if we repeat and reinforce slander and lies; we do this because our viewers want to hear it. We “allow” them to make their own truth. It is the exaggerated version of Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz claiming their obligation to voice the big lie about a stolen election in 2020: Who are we to dismiss lies and liars if millions of people want to believe them? “People should be allowed believe in what they want and who we are to correct them ”is the new definition of freedom. It doesn’t matter if it’s also the definition of where Greene admits he went astray when he started sharing dangerous conspiracies.

The Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world are not trying to fix what they think is plaguing Fox News, CNN, Facebook, Google, MSNBC and even QAnon. She is pointing out her flaws because she wants to be excused for choosing not to believe them all. The net effect of his performance this week has more to do with fundraising and the monopoly of scarce public attention than with any significant statement about the nexus between discourse and facts. That is why, given the chance to speak to reporters again on Thursday, she left on high grounds. As he did all week, Greene refused to answer reporters ‘questions after his speech on Thursday, at which point an aide scolded CNN’s Daniella Diaz, Fox News’ Jason Donner and Bloomberg government’s Emily Wilkins with the statement that “She doesn’t respond to you. … She responds to the people of 14^º District. “When a journalist replied that” we are accountable to the people of the 14th District, “another aide replied,” We are accountable to the people of America. “The question is how they would do it reliably if the press is inherently full of liars. .

Blaming journalism for tearing the country apart while you destroy it yourself is pure and indisputable Trumpism. To yawn. But Greene does better than Trump, because she’s not just blaming the media for the world’s problems – she’s actually blaming the media for herself. It is part of her broader defense that she is a good person, a mother without blemish and that she has been forgiven by God, so only bad people still seek responsibility. The press has made me a dangerous person, she says, and the press is reporting my dangerousness, and that is also very dangerous. It is quite a message, as it burns everything in its path without replacing it with anything reliable. But whatever it is, this is not a free speech message or a statement about the nature of the truth. And you can be sure, because she already told you that, whatever atrocity Greene spits next, it won’t be her fault.